Waterloo Sunset: A Lake District Mystery #4 (Lake District Mysteries) Page 14

  Harry noticed a few dark smudges on the stone floor. Traces of Jim’s blood left after the police had taken samples. He couldn’t shut out the vision of his partner, groaning as life seeped out of him. He flinched as he imagined the pain, dug his nails into his palm as he strove for calm.

  The police hadn’t moved Jim’s car. No reason to do so, once they’d checked it hadn’t been broken into or tampered with. Of the three other vehicles, Juliet’s and Wayne’s luxury motors were parked next to each other, as if keeping a snobbish distance from Victor’s rusting Fiesta, tucked into a corner marked RESERVED—BUILDING MANAGER.

  ‘Jim always left his car in the same place,’ Victor said. ‘He was a creature of habit.’

  Past tense. Harry ground his teeth. ‘Aren’t we all?’

  Victor clicked his tongue as he surveyed the scene. ‘Who would have thought it? A crime scene in my own bloody back yard.’

  ‘You talked to the CSIs?’

  ‘Only the DC who took a statement from me. Not that I had much to state. I was on the desk and didn’t have the faintest idea what was happening down here.’ Victor shuddered. ‘I tell you, Harry. It’s one thing to read about crime scene stuff as a hobby. Something else entirely when you know the victim.’

  Tell me about it.

  ‘Did the police press you for an alibi?’

  Victor frowned. ‘They asked a few routine questions, that’s all. I’m hardly likely to do Jim in, am I? Decent feller, always happy to pass the time of day. Besides, Barney can vouch for me.’

  Very convenient. Not that Victor was a prime suspect. As he said, why would he wish to do Jim harm?

  ‘We were chewing the fat when Wayne Saxelby raised the alarm. I rushed down here to see what I could do, while Barney kept an eye on the desk. Wayne had already dialled 999 and inside five minutes, the place was crawling with medics and coppers. Jesus, what a night.’

  ‘Anyone else in the building around the critical time, other possible witnesses?’

  Victor shook his head. ‘The other tenants had all made themselves scarce by half five. As per usual. Same with your staff. Apart from the Mays.’

  ‘The Mays?’

  ‘Casper and Juliet, of course. They came down about twenty minutes before Jim Crusoe.’

  ‘Together?’

  Victor leaned against a sign on the wall that said in big red letters No Smoking. No Naked Flames. ‘There’s no law against it, mate. Just because they’re divorced, doesn’t mean that…’

  ‘Did they go down to the car park?’

  ‘No, through the main entrance. When Wayne called me downstairs, Mrs. May’s car was parked in its usual spot. So either the pair of them went off on foot or took a cab.’

  ‘Unless Casper drove.’

  ‘He never leaves his car here. Told me once, he has a private garage next to his office in Rumford Street.’

  ‘You didn’t happen to see which direction they took?’

  ‘Christ, Harry, what do you think I am? Some kind of voyeur?’ Victor assumed an improbable haughtiness. ‘I mean, you can’t possibly imagine Mr. and Mrs. May had anything to do with the attack on Jim Crusoe.’

  ‘No, but…’

  ‘It was some scally, trust me. Somehow he’s sneaked into the basement and decided to lie in wait, see who he could mug. Maybe someone forgot to lock the external door. It happens, no matter how often I remind people about the need for security. Poor old Jim drew the short straw. But even a mugging gone wrong is still murder as far as the law’s concerned, eh? No way could anyone have clobbered him by mistake.’

  ‘Jim isn’t dead.’

  ‘No, no. Sorry, mate. No offence. But you know what I mean? Such a decent bloke. You’d never think he had an enemy in the world. It’s a crying shame.’

  Harry thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his suit trousers. ‘Thanks for your time.’

  ‘No problem.’ Victor glanced at his watch. ‘Seen all you want to see?’

  ***

  Harry waited in the lobby for the lift to take him to the office and wondered whether Victor’s furtiveness was suspicious or merely habitual. After the attack on Jim, he would take nothing for granted. How much did he know about Victor or his mate Barney the mobile embalmer? How much did he really know about anyone, come to that? You only saw the sides of people that they wanted to show, learned the details of their lives they were willing to reveal. Everyone kept secrets. Even conventional, conservative Sylvia.

  The lift doors slid open and Juliet May stood in front of him. He took in the smoothness of her ski slope nose. The startling fullness of those lips. She was wearing a blouse and cream trousers so simple that he knew they must have cost a fortune.

  ‘I heard the news about Jim.’ Her eyelids flickered. ‘Is he…?’

  ‘He’s in intensive care. God knows whether he’ll pull through.’

  ‘It’s dreadful. Casper’s furious. The police have even questioned him.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘They aren’t impressed that the CCTV is fucked. Neither is Casper. I suppose the contractors cut corners. There will be hell to pay when Casper catches up with them. The last thing he wants is to be interrogated by some wet-behind-the-ears plod who doesn’t know who he’s dealing with. This has caused Casper a lot of grief.’

  ‘My heart bleeds. I suppose he has an alibi for the attack on Jim?’

  ‘He was in a restaurant, if you must know, for a drink and a chat with a business colleague. I joined them later, once they’d got the boring stuff out of the way. I went for a walk along the riverside.’ She gave him a teasing smile and he guessed she had been drinking. ‘So I’m afraid I don’t have an alibi, Harry.’

  ‘You don’t need one.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Was the business partner Malachy Needham, by any chance? I came across him the other day in court.’

  ‘Your client accused him of murder.’ She leaned forward and he could smell alcohol fumes on her breath. ‘Though the City Coroner was never going to find him guilty, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Coroners aren’t allowed to name people as guilty of murder these days.’

  ‘Whatever.’ She shrugged. ‘The legal details don’t matter. It was all taken care of.’

  Harry shook his head. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Casper and I may be divorced, Harry, but we still speak to each other every day. He’s tired of his little waitress, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘In the meantime, you’re another of his business partners. Like Malachy Needham.’

  ‘There’s no comparison between Malachy and me. Casper’s relationship with him is entirely professional.’

  ‘They run an escort agency together.’

  ‘Cultural Companions, yes. Good name, don’t you think?’

  ‘Until two of the escorts got themselves murdered.’

  ‘Nothing to do with Casper.’

  ‘Can you be sure?’

  ‘Stone cold positive.’ Her expression hardened. ‘Both those girls cut private deals with their clients. The stupid kids do it all the time, just to save the agency fees. More fool them. At least Casper would protect them.’

  ‘Heart of gold, eh?’

  ‘You may scoff, but I promise you. Casper didn’t have anything to do with their deaths. All he cares about is that the killings have messed up his precious business plan.’

  He shook his head. ‘Christ, Juliet, how can you tolerate a man like that?’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re jealous?’

  ‘It’s not that. He has a score to settle with Jim.’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘He and Needham had money to launder and he wanted Jim to handle the deal. When Jim said no, Casper wasn’t happy.’

  ‘You’re not suggesting Casper arranged for Jim to be attacked last night?’

  ‘How could anyone prove it? I’m sure he wouldn’t dirty his own hands, now he’s snuggling up to the great and the good.’

>   ‘Harry.’ Lowering her voice as if someone might eavesdrop, she leaned towards him. ‘Don’t say such things. Even to me. It’s dangerous. Whatever you’ve heard about Casper, you haven’t heard the half of it. Trust me, you wouldn’t want to know.’

  ‘You know something, Juliet? After what’s happened to Jim, I don’t care any more. Less than twenty four hours ago someone left my oldest friend for dead. All that matters to me now is discovering who and why.’

  ‘Leave it,’ she said. ‘The police will find the bad guy and lock him up. That’s what we pay our taxes for.’

  ‘Like they locked up Casper each time he did something wrong?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘And what did you mean about the City Coroner?’ he demanded. ‘Why so confident that Malachy would get off?’

  ‘Oh, Harry. Twenty years a solicitor and you’re still not wise to the ways of the world. Malachy had the best advice that money could buy, but he and Casper had something useful tucked up their sleeves. They gave it to me for safe keeping, to tell you the truth. With all this trouble over the murdered girls, they’re worried about having their homes and offices searched.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘A photograph. I keep it in my magazine rack. Bold as brass.’ She laughed, and he realised she’d had even more to drink than he’d thought. ‘Shades of that story by Edgar Allan Poe.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  A mischievous smile. ‘Come up to the penthouse and take a look for yourself, if you don’t believe me. I don’t mind telling you the story, entre nous. Look, I’ll be back here in an hour. I’ll make us a pot of Earl Grey. Have you learned to drink it with lemon yet, rather than milk?’

  ‘Thanks, but I have work to do.’

  ‘You need a break.’

  ‘Sorry, Juliet.’

  ‘Come on, you know you want to.’ She retrieved a key from her bag. ‘Here’s the spare for my front door. I had Casper change the locks as soon as he told me that dreadful Creevey man has a master key to everywhere in the building.’

  ‘Including our office?’

  ‘Don’t look outraged. It’s only a precaution. Casper likes to keep in touch with what goes on in his properties. Don’t worry, I can’t imagine he’d ever want to rifle through your drawers.’

  ‘We’ll change our locks too.’

  ‘Calm down, it’s no big deal. Shall I see you in an hour? Casper’s out on business this afternoon.’

  He shook his head. ‘Seriously, it’s not a good idea.’

  ‘Take it.’ She slipped the key into his jacket pocket and skipped off towards the main doors before he could hand it back. ‘See you shortly!’

  ‘But not this afternoon,’ he said to himself as he stepped into the lift. Their affair belonged to the past and he meant it to stay there.

  The lift stopped at the fifth floor. He said to himself that if there was anyone around, he’d get out and go to work. If not, he’d carry on up to the top of the building and have a scout around for himself.

  The doors opened. Nobody was to be seen. He pressed the button and the doors closed again.

  The two penthouses on the top floor each covered more square feet than the average semi-detached. Across the landing lived Tamara Dighton and Wayne Saxelby. He tried the key in Juliet’s lock and the door eased open at a touch. He found himself in an airy hallway, its centrepiece a wrought-iron spiral staircase. Each wall was covered from top to bottom with framed abstract art, wild splashes of purple, green, yellow and black.

  The stairs led to a vast entertaining room. A dozen cushions in intricate patchwork covers were scattered over a U-shaped sofa. Wherever you sat, windows afforded an outlook of the Strand, and the river beyond. The glass was tinted; when the sun was high, the room would flood with light. A narrow balcony ran outside the picture windows. There was a deck chair styled after the green Penguin edition of The Big Sleep, and oak containers filled with blooms as lurid as the paintings in the hall.

  The magazine rack stood close to a TV screen worthy of a small cinema. Stuffed between copies of Cosmopolitan and Vogue, he put his hand on an A4 brown envelope. Reaching inside, he found a photograph and slid it out.

  Why did Juliet think the fuzzy picture might be useful to Malachy Needham? It looked innocent enough. Hand in hand, a man and a woman strolled up to the well-lit front entrance of the Adelphi Hotel. The photo had been taken at night, perhaps in haste. The man wore a well-cut business suit; he was around forty, and his expression was so smug and satisfied that it might have belonged to Wayne Saxelby. But it wasn’t Wayne. Harry had never seen him before.

  The man was admiring his companion’s figure. Her face was half-turned away from the camera. Again it was someone Harry didn’t recognise. Not Ceri, for sure. This was a younger woman in a skimpy top and short skirt, her face creased with laughter. Perhaps her companion had cracked a joke, perhaps she enjoyed him peering at her chest. On closer inspection, something about the woman struck Harry as familiar, but he couldn’t place her.

  He sank into the embrace of Juliet’s sofa and scoured his memory. The Adelphi, did that have any significance? He’d had a drink there with Ceri, but Juliet couldn’t know that. By tradition the Adelphi was the finest hotel in the city, and though it now faced competition from upstarts on the waterfront, none could match its history. It once served passengers of the White Star Line; the Legal Group met in a suite modelled after the Titanic’s smoking lounge. The Beatles stayed there, so did Roy Rogers and Trigger. During the war, the White Mischief murder suspect, Jock Delves Broughton booked in after his return from Kenya and took a fatal overdose in his bedroom. Yet Harry saw nothing sinister in this photograph of two people relishing each other’s company.

  Juliet had fooled him. She knew curiosity was in his DNA. Did she realise he fancied Ceri? She’d found a way to tempt him up to the penthouse. He wondered why she had taken the trouble.

  The penthouse doorbell rang, a sharp and unforgiving yelp.

  Shit. This couldn’t be Juliet—why sound your own front bell? He pushed the photograph back into its envelope and stuffed it back into the rack.

  The doorbell squealed again, as if in pain.

  ‘Juliet, you in there?’ Casper’s voice rasped out of the entryphone speakers. ‘We finished early. Come on, get off your arse, save me digging out my key.’

  That was the nouveaux riches for you. As bone idle as the old rich, with all their mansions and servants. Harry shut his eyes, scarcely daring to breathe. It could have been worse, Casper might have returned home to find him in bed with Juliet. But this was bad enough.

  A sigh of disgust at the lack of response wafted from the speakers. Harry prayed that Casper would piss off and come back some other time.

  From downstairs came the thud of a door thrown open. So much for the power of prayer.

  Harry’s heart hammered as he looked round. A pair of glazed doors gave on to the balcony. He tried his key in the lock and one of the doors slid open. Footsteps crashed on the iron treads of the spiral staircase. Any second now, Casper would be up here.

  No choice but to step on to the ledge outside the room and pull the door shut behind him. A stone balustrade separated him from a seven floor drop to the street below. The Liver Building was in deep shadow, but the sun had reappeared, high over the heads of the Liver Birds. A yellow open-top tourist bus drove by, and Ferry Cross the Mersey blared from speakers on a deserted upper deck.

  Clinging to the outside wall of the penthouse, he clambered past the planters. A pool of greasy water had collected and his feet gave way under him. He found himself sliding, but somehow he stayed upright. Inching forward, he made it beyond the last window on the front elevation of the building. Rounding the corner as the balcony took a ninety-degree turn, he halted. He was out of sight of the entertaining room, not a moment too soon.

  Juliet’s phrase echoed in his memory. Views to die for.

  As he looked down on St. Nicholas Gardens, unwant
ed memories of Vertigo flooded into his mind. Jimmy Stewart, the investigator haunted by a fear of heights, and betrayed by his obsession with a beautiful woman, roaming the rooftops of San Francisco. In his head he heard Bernard Hermann’s Wagnerian soundtrack rise to a terrible crescendo. To break the spell, he glanced over towards the Strand. Not such a good idea. The trucks and cars were tiny, the pavement a dizzying distance away.

  The flower beds outside the church blazed with geraniums and marigolds, but when the sun dodged behind a cloud, the wind had a terrier’s bite. A shiver ran down his backbone. Impossible to hang around here for hours, waiting for Casper to go on his way. The flags above the hotel across the road flapped like albatross wings. It was only a question of time before a cold blast from the Mersey whipped him off his feet.

  He heard a click as the door to the balcony shut. In his haste, he’d left the key in the lock and Casper must have noticed. No chance now of waiting for the man to leave and then stealing back inside.

  Breathe deeply, count to ten.

  Half a dozen strides ahead, the balcony came to a dead end. The way beyond was blocked. No gate, no stairs, not even a ladder. Wonderful, absolutely fucking wonderful.

  He was trapped.

  Chapter Twelve

  He reached the end of the balcony, and levered himself up. The wind blew his hair into his eyes and the wet soles of his shoes slipped when he tried to stand upright, so that he had to grab for the cold little balustrade to avoid toppling over. The unnatural movement tweaked a muscle in his shoulder and he let out a cry of pain.

  There must be a way out of here.

  Gripping the low stone wall, he eased forward and peered over the end of the balcony. Six feet below was a wooden deck, guarded on the left by a railing that ran along the outside of the building above the gardens. To the right of the deck was a deep rectangular light well. Harry peered down into it and saw a couple of the big blue waste containers at ground level. There was no safety rail on that side of the deck. Harry recalled Victor showing him round on the day they moved in; he’d mentioned there were four light wells in John Newton House, designed into the structure to afford natural light to rooms that lacked outside windows. Nice idea, unless you happened to fall down one of them.